Battlefield 4 class action suit never fires first shot

This is sure to increase the Electronic Arts (EA) legal team’s gamer score: An attempted class action lawsuit against the company for problems surrounding the release of Battlefield 4 has stalled before it could ever get off the ground.

In December, securities law firm Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd LLP filed a complaint in U.S. district court that claimed EA willfully misled purchasers into buying the game despite knowing that it had multiple issues upon release. The game launched on Oct. 29 with a number of bugs, and the game’s servers were hit with a DDOS attack in November that hampered customers’ ability to play even further.

But now, Gamespot reports that all mention of the lawsuit has been scrubbed from the law firm’s website. In addition, the firm has not responded to any request for comment from the gaming website, whether through voicemail or email.

Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd had 60 days after the initial complaint for a lead plaintiff to come forward in order for the case to proceed as a class action lawsuit. However, it seems that lead plaintiff never actually materialized. As such, the case is now functionally dead.

At the time of the initial complaint, EA told Gamespot that the accusations were “meritless” and that “We intend to aggressively defend ourselves, and we're confident the court will dismiss the complaint in due course.”

The attempted class action lawsuit claimed that EA CEO Peter Moore had willfully misled customers by claiming in a July 23, 2013, conference call that “[w]e couldn't be happier with the quality of the games our teams are producing or the early reception those games are getting from critics and consumers.” The suit had planned to include plaintiffs who had purchased EA stock between the following day, July 24, and Dec. 4, 2013.

In January, Lieff, Cabraser, Heimann and Bernstein also announced a similar proposed class action lawsuit against EA. The law firm’s website claims that it accepted applications for lead plaintiff until Feb. 18, 2014, but there is no word whether the move was successful.

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